“In a period of no more than a month and a half, the beaches of Tulum, Quintana Roo, will be free of sargassum”, the municipal president, Víctor Mas Tah, said on August 12th. A cleaning program has started in which the federal, state and municipal governments work in a coordinated way, along with the private initiative.
The municipality of Tulum created a collection center with state-of-the-art technology, with the aim of preventing the filtration of toxic liquids to the subsoil and thus leaving the Caribbean coast clean of sargassum.
Among the cleaning activities that are carried out are the collection of the macroalgae, its transportation to the collection center, the inter-institutional coordination for the correct extraction and disposal of the algae and the cleaning of public accesses of the Tulum beaches.
In addition, in coordination with the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas (CONANP), private initiative volunteers, civil society, students and tourists extracted a total of 56 cubic meters of sargassum from the beaches of the archaeological zone of Tulum.
With the support of the Federal Terrestrial Maritime Zone, CONAP, the State Government, and the Secretariats of the Navy and Environment and Natural Resources, the “Cleaner Beaches Program” (Programa Playas más Limpias), began in Tulum, and a notable advance can be perceived on the beaches Santa Fe, Pescadores, Maya, Paraíso, Mezzanine and Punta Piedra.
Within the advance from June to August of this year, three thousand linear meters have been cleaned up. From National Park to Punta Piedra, and 3,864 cubic meters of sargassum, equivalent to 1,932 tons, have been removed from the beach and taken to final disposal sites.
According to information from the Sargasso Monitoring Network Cancun, 40 points on the Caribbean coast have a low arrival of the seaweed, 19 moderate, 19 abundant and only two beaches on Cozumel Island, Molas Point and Xhanan Beach, are in red alert status, for an excessive arrival of sargassum.
The Yucatan Times Newsroom
